Cur­tis Williams

Spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal was mur­dered by a trans-na­tion­al drug or­gan­i­sa­tion with op­er­a­tions in T&T, says the Unit­ed States As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State William Brown­field.Speak­ing from Wash­ing­ton, DC, in a tele­con­fer­ence with Caribbean jour­nal­ists yes­ter­day, Am­bas­sador Brown­field said:"Those in Trinidad would know that I vis­it­ed your coun­try two months ago and two days af­ter I left there was the bru­tal mur­der of Ms Dana See­ta­hal. She was mur­dered by a trans-na­tion­al drug or­gan­i­sa­tion."

Asked by the T&T Guardian to elab­o­rate on this sug­ges­tion, Brown­field, who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for in­ter­na­tion­al nar­cotics and law en­force­ment af­fairs, said:"I stand by every­thing I have said. This was clear­ly not a crime of pas­sion."It was not a crime of op­por­tu­ni­ty where some­one felt they should steal her hand­bag and then found they had to shoot her."This was a well planned and or­ches­trat­ed hit."This is not some­thing you plan eas­i­ly. It is or­gan­ised crime with an in­ter­na­tion­al play­er that has a crime or­gan­i­sa­tion with pres­ence in T&T."

On May 4, See­ta­hal was shot dead just out­side the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty on Hamil­ton Hold­er Street as she was on her way to her apart­ment at One Wood­brook Place af­ter leav­ing the Ma Pau casi­no on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Port-of-Spain.Res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing a vol­ley of gun­shots fol­lowed by screech­ing tyres. By the time they con­tact­ed po­lice and ran out­side to check, they found See­ta­hal slumped over the steer­ing wheel of her light blue Volk­swa­gen Touareg. She was pro­nounced dead at the scene.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams has pub­licly said the po­lice knew how and why See­ta­hal was killed but thus far, 53 days af­ter her killing, no one has been charged with her mur­der.Yes­ter­day, Brown­field said See­ta­hal's mur­der could not be seen as "just an­oth­er sta­tis­tic," ex­plain­ing that See­ta­hal had part­nered with the US gov­ern­ment on sev­er­al is­sues, had been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a Ful­bright schol­ar­ship from the US gov­ern­ment, and was, in his words, "a star, a woman of tremen­dous courage."

Reached in Eng­land last night Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said he pre­ferred not to com­ment.

Drug, crime prob­lem gow­ing

Point­ing out that there was a cor­re­la­tion be­tween the in­crease of drugs flow­ing through the re­gion and the crime and vi­o­lence on the re­gion­al streets, in­clud­ing those of T&T, US As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State William Brown­field said the in­creased use of the Caribbean as a trans-ship­ment point for drugs had led to the in­crease in mur­ders.He pre­dict­ed that the lev­el of vi­o­lence was like­ly to get worse over the next few years, warn­ing that even arms of the State can be chal­lenged.

He added: "Drug traf­fick­ers have to have the fire­pow­er to de­fend their turf. They even­tu­al­ly have to be pre­pared to take on in­sti­tu­tions of the State, whether that is the po­lice, bor­der guards, cus­toms or the Ju­di­cia­ry."Brown­field said drug car­tels were well or­gan­ised and tar­get­ed coun­tries where there were weak­ness­es, which could range from poor­ly paid pub­lic of­fi­cials to un­pro­tect­ed bor­ders.

He re­peat­ed his state­ment, re­port­ed in the T&T Guardian last month, that the US es­ti­mat­ed the quan­tum of drugs be­ing trans-shipped through the Caribbean to the US had in­creased, say­ing it had risen be­tween 2011 and 2013 by over 300 per cent.He list­ed three ma­jor routes in the Caribbean. The first, he said, was through Ja­maica and then on­to the Unit­ed States, the sec­ond through the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic/Haiti and the third through the east­ern Caribbean.

Brown­field said the US gov­ern­ment was part­ner­ing with Cari­com gov­ern­ments to help deal with the crime chal­lenge, in­clud­ing the chal­lenge of guns com­ing in­to the re­gion from the US.

He said the re­al­i­ty was that the US had its own laws re­lat­ing to gun con­trol but had put in place a sys­tem where law en­force­ment could trace a gun in re­al time, de­ter­mine if it was in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly and if the bal­lis­tics showed it had been used in any oth­er crime. The am­bas­sador ad­mit­ted that was not enough but said the US was op­er­at­ing in a sit­u­a­tion where its le­gal sys­tem was dif­fer­ent from those in the re­gion.

On the is­sue of ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings, he said if there was ev­i­dence that the po­lice ser­vice was in­volved in such killing in any coun­try, by law, the US would have to dis­con­tin­ue co-op­er­a­tion with the or­gan­i­sa­tion.He ex­plained that was cur­rent­ly the sit­u­a­tion with the St Lu­cian po­lice and that was why co-op­er­a­tion with that coun­try had been sus­pend­ed. Brown­field said that was un­for­tu­nate be­cause the move not on­ly hurt St Lu­cia but the re­gion as a whole.

Al­le­ga­tions of ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings have been made against the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice by mem­bers of the pub­lic af­ter the re­cent spate of po­lice shoot­ings.So far this year, 29 peo­ple have been killed by the po­lice in T&T.